The London Olympics: ‘All the rules of life were suspended, and magic ruled the Earth’

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I spent quite a lot of time during the Olympics wondering how it would be
afterwards. Not whether we’d get the £9 billion back, or what they’d do with
the Park, or whether the “legacy” would turn out to be anything more than a
rusty helter-skelter and a Big Mac headache. But how we would be. And the
world.

I sat quite often in empty southeast London stadia during that strange
fortnight, after the final whistle, when the competitors had left and the
great video screens had played out their repertoire of moving Olympic
montages and recorded celebrities wishing us